MS Schools Agreement - Server Products

[dgsmith]

We're looking to buy a budget server very shortly and are planning to run Windows Server 2008 on it (looking at web edition as it's cheaper and sufficient for our needs), though we are planning to pay the full OEM price.

Does, or can, our school agreement cover us for this, either currently in our annual cost or additionally at a cheaper cost compared to paying for the OEM version?

There are alot of topics here about schools agreement for desktops but no discussion seems to go as far as licencing server products, either for new servers or upgrading the OS on existing servers.

Can someone clarify or point me in the direction of some literature for this?

[SYNACK]

Assuming that it is like our schools agreement you should talk to your licensing provider. With ours we pay a set, small fee anually for each server license ($100NZD Win 2k8 Standard). These licenses cover you for the latest version of a product for the whole year so as long as we are still liscenced when 2k8 R2 comes out we can put it on at no extra cost.

With the server products there is no requirement for an OEM one on the box like with client OS software so it is vastly cheaper for us to do it through the aggreement.

[wagnerk]

Contact the company that you buy your MS licensing thru. We pay under £80 per year for the Enterprise edition of MS Server (with 2008, it allows us to run up to 4 VM without having to buy another licence )

You can see here for an example of prices.

-Ken

[dhicks]

Can someone clarify or point me in the direction of some literature for this?

Simply contact your MS reseller to discuss educational pricing. I think a standard edition of Windows Server cost us around £100, one-off price, not per year or anything. I think Windows Enterprise was around £300 at educational pricing.

--
David Hicks

[DMcCoy]

We're looking to buy a budget server very shortly and are planning to run Windows Server 2008 on it (looking at web edition as it's cheaper and sufficient for our needs), though we are planning to pay the full OEM price.

Does, or can, our school agreement cover us for this, either currently in our annual cost or additionally at a cheaper cost compared to paying for the OEM version?

There are alot of topics here about schools agreement for desktops but no discussion seems to go as far as licencing server products, either for new servers or upgrading the OS on existing servers.

Can someone clarify or point me in the direction of some literature for this?

Minimum points to join the scheme could be an issue. 300 is 20 copies of server standard or 10 enterprise. For just servers under SA I really just use academic select instead, although datacenter is well priced under SA (per cpu though).

[dgsmith]

Standard edition for £100? Seems too good to be true! I was even pleasently surprised at how cheap the web edition was per year from pugh, compared to buying outright an OEM copy.

DMcCoy, i'm not sure i'm following you exactly. Are you saying we may not be eligible if we don't have enough points (would that be how many machines we have x eligible software)?
We have other servers but the licence for that we bought outright, we just wanted to see if we can get a licence in this instance at a lesser cost. Could you be a bit more specific?

[DMcCoy]

Standard edition for £100? Seems too good to be true! I was even pleasently surprised at how cheap the web edition was per year from pugh, compared to buying outright an OEM copy.

DMcCoy, i'm sure i'm following you exactly. Are you saying we may not be eligible if we don't have enough points (would that be how many machines we have x eligible software)?
We have other servers but the licence for that we bought outright, we just wanted to see if we can get a licence in this instance at a lesser cost. Could you be a bit more specific?

There is a minimum order of 300 points for schools agreement (usually this is 100 machines as MS Desktop school license includes Windows upgrade (1 point), Core CAL (1 point) and Office (1 point).

I'm using Datacenter licenses at around £70 per cpu to allow unlimited virtualisation rights (Windows server has license restrictions when doing live migrations).

[dhicks]

Standard edition for £100?

Yes. Honest :-)

--
David Hicks

[ArchersIT]

Simply contact your MS reseller to discuss educational pricing. I think a standard edition of Windows Server cost us around £100, one-off price, not per year or anything. I think Windows Enterprise was around £300 at educational pricing.

--
David Hicks

Hmm - the quote on my desk for Windows 2008 enterprise is less than £200 (one-off rather than per year pricing). I had informal pricing on standard at approx 1/3 of this.

I rang Civica - home - they would only deal with me through the County - but were giving this kind of pricing. I also tried ramesys - but I know some on here do not like them.

The key thing is not to buy retail (even OEM retail) but to contact an approved education supplier (the URL to find them is on another thread that I have lost for the moment) and buy an education licence.

HTH

Cheers

Jonathan

[dgsmith]

Thanks for the replies guys. Seems we can certainly benefit getting the OS through our Microsoft SA supplier (after querying, we can get Windows Server 2008 standard for 75% the cost of Server 2008 web edition OEM, outright purchase)!

Annual prices are very good too, so glad I asked for your advice. Much appreciated!

[Theblacksheep]

I'm using Datacenter licenses at around £70 per cpu to allow unlimited virtualisation rights (Windows server has license restrictions when doing live migrations).

I've come across the activation number limit today... created lots of test VMs early on and justed deleted the shortly after, hit the 50 limit today when trying to active some proper servers.

After an hour on the phone to 5 different MS people through 5 different phone numbers they eventually said I can only request more by email and it takes 3-4 business days. GRRRR

[DMcCoy]

I've come across the activation number limit today... created lots of test VMs early on and justed deleted the shortly after, hit the 50 limit today when trying to active some proper servers.

After an hour on the phone to 5 different MS people through 5 different phone numbers they eventually said I can only request more by email and it takes 3-4 business days. GRRRR

MAK keys is not the issue, the problem is if you move a Windows license within six months of the original assignment to the original physical machine it counts as two licenses.

So for 6 blades running a single instance of a windows server could need 6 licenses to migrate it to any other blade whenever you wanted. Datacenter avoids all these problems with unlimited virtualisation rights, I still have a limited number of MAK keys for it.

[Theblacksheep]

MAK keys is not the issue, the problem is if you move a Windows license within six months of the original assignment to the original physical machine it counts as two licenses.

So for 6 blades running a single instance of a windows server could need 6 licenses to migrate it to any other blade whenever you wanted. Datacenter avoids all these problems with unlimited virtualisation rights, I still have a limited number of MAK keys for it.

I have 8 2008DC lic's for 4 2-core blades (ESX4), the lics have never been moved.

49/50 MAK keys used. I dont understand!

[Busybub]

There is a minimum order of 300 points for schools agreement (usually this is 100 machines as MS Desktop school license includes Windows upgrade (1 point), Core CAL (1 point) and Office (1 point).

Eh?

Two of my sites have between 75-80 workstations, with Servers under Select licensing.

???

[Busybub]

Yes. Honest :-)

--
David Hicks

Have prices gone up recently? Think we paid 78+VAT for ours...